Check out my animated twitter snapshot. vizify.com/taylor-hatmake…

— taylor hatmaker (@tayhatmaker) June 13, 2013

A very cool little data visualization startup based in Portland, OR, Vizify partnered with Twitter back in December to sculpt the company's unruly hoard of trend data and hashtags into a big year-end retrospective and user-specific ones, just for fun. When I spoke to Vizify's CEO and co-founder about last year's Twitter data viz undertaking, he explained the complementary relationship between the two companies:

It's Twitter, so they're the global conversation. And what's sort of interesting to us... is that they have that whole in-the-moment, rapid-fire, what's-happening-now thing nailed down... and yet when you step back from it and draw a picture of it over a longer period of time it becomes a really powerful tool for self-reflection. Unlike reading someone's stream, this is just a really accessible, playful, fun way to get a quick a feel for what someone's all about.

In a search for meaning likely not unfamiliar to any tweet-addicted user, Twitter as a company seems interested in connecting all its micro-moments into larger arcs too. Starting with its Twitter Stories project, the company began to dig into some of its 140-character missives to uncover the deeper tales underneath. 

Interested in uncovering your own (not-so) secret history? Check out the #Vizify hashtag or fire up your own - just be sure to pick the right soundtrack. We did. 

Just made a movie of my twitter: vizify.com/brian-proffitt… What do you think? #Vizify 

— Brian Proffitt (@TheTechScribe) June 13, 2013

Just made a movie of my twitter: vizify.com/dan-rowinski/t… What do you think? #FollowMe #Vizify

— Dan_Rowinski (@Dan_Rowinski) June 13, 2013

Over the next few weeks all Facebook users will be able to include a hashtagged phrase, like #royalbaby or #puppies, in their posts and then watch it become clickable. When a hashtag is included in a post, clicking on it will pop out a feed that aggregates others posts that have been tagged with the same phrase.

• Is there a God?
• Are we alone in the universe?
• What's the best superpower to have? 

Where technology has foundered, though, perhaps the crowd - all of us - can succeed. After all, according to Wikipedia, the "wisdom of the crowd" is a well-documented principle:

The wisdom of the crowd is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. A large group's aggregated answers to questions involving quantity estimation, general world knowledge, and spatial reasoning has generally been found to be as good as, and often better than, the answer given by any of the individuals within the group.

Wisdom Of The Crowd

To find the answers to the questions that have eluded humankind from before the beginning of civilization, I consulted three popular sources of crowdsourced knowledge:

Yahoo! Answers: Anyone with a Yahoo ID can proffer a question or an answer. Regrettably, the site appears populated mostly by lonely teens - with a related level of expertise - and the design seems optimized for the late 1990s. 

Quora: Quora bills itself as "your best source of knowledge." Unfortunately, it insists upon your social media identity as the price of entry. The site does have a powerful search function, although many questions seem posed for no reason other than to show off how clever the asker is.

StackExchange: StackExchange is comprised of various mini-sites, called "communities," mostly technical in nature. There's an Ubuntu community, an Android community and many others. No registration is required. Questions can even be altered by users. The result is sort of like Wikipedia, albeit mostly for ephemeral data for very technically specific questions.

I searched all three for the answers to the big-picture questions listed above. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. 

Does God Exist? (Does Game of Thrones?)

On StackExchange, asking "does God exist" maddeningly brings up questions related to George RR Martin and something called the "eleventh metal." On Yahoo Answers, the very first response is a paid link to "Does God Exist at Amazon" - sadly, without a definitive answer. Quora fared much better. Perhaps too well, as a barrage of answers and related questions were quickly presented on a page of seemingly endless text.

The best answer? I scrolled through scores of responses on Quora and found this posted quote from Einstein - which may be no answer at all:

"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

Are We alone In The Universe? (Signs Point To Yes)

Next, I searched for the answer to "are we alone in the universe?" On this question, StackExchange failed wonderfully - leading me down a rabbit hole of questions concerning Star Trek, Star Wars and waffle irons. Quora's crowd mostly just answered this question with another question. Define "alone" or define "we," for example. 

Surprisingly, Yahoo Answers offered what I considered the best response - if not exactly an answer:

There are, in theory, 750,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems in the visible universe. Do you really think that only 1 solar system out of 750 sextillion solar systems has life?  

(See also With Pulse, LinkedIn Is Becoming The Newspaper Of The Future.)

LinkedIn was the 22nd most visited website in the world as of March 2013 (according to LinkedIn) and more online adults use it than Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram or Pinterest (according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project).  it turns out there are plenty of ways you can use it even when you're perfectly happy with your current position.

Here are five ways you can get the most from LinkedIn, from slacking to socializing, that have nothing to do with getting a new job:

1. Stalk And Be Stalked 

Wondering if somebody’s got a secret crush or is just super curious about you? It’s hard to tell which of your connections are lurking around your Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook profiles. (In fact, there are plenty of phishing schemes that snag victims by promising to do just that.) Only one of the major social networks offers this feature. You guessed it! It’s LinkedIn.

LinkedIn doesn’t only tell you how many people are viewing your profil and how frequently they’re doing so. If you are connected within three degrees of the viewer, their name will pop up next to the date they viewed your page. If you’ve splurged on a LinkedIn premium account, you’ll be able to see everybody who’s checked you out.

This usually goes both ways, but you can become a master stalker simply by changing your privacy settings. Go to Settings → Privacy Controls → Select what others see when you've viewed their profile. Opt to be totally anonymous. Happy sleuthing! 

2. Join Discussion Groups About Your Interests

Is Reddit too immature? Tumblr too much of a teenage hangout? Help your online discussions grow up by moving them to LinkedIn. 

Not everyone realizes you can search LinkedIn by interest, and not all of those interests are strictly business. For example, you can join a group to chat about about hiking, history, science fiction or even Tumblr. Don’t see your interest? You can start a new group, too. 

But be discreet. Since LinkedIn is first and foremost a professional community, you never know if your current or future boss is checking out your group memberships. If you’re not an agitator or troll, this is a great thing — participants in discussions on LinkedIn tend to be much kinder and more forgiving than on other parts of the Internet.

3. Download Useful Apps

Just like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is compatible with a number of third-party apps, ranging from LinkedIn acquisition SlideShare to blogging software WordPress. Used in tandem, you can add a lot of functionality — and personality — to your otherwise buttoned-up profile.

Traveling? Be sure to use the TripIt plugin to let your connections know where you’re going. Want to chat face to face? Use Hookflash for LinkedIn. Buffer is a great way to snag and share your most interesting links with your friends or group. 

Experiment with a few LinkedIn apps and see how your experience changes. Not just a resume any more, is it? 

4. Become A Mentor 

First, make sure you’ve indicated your educational background on your LinkedIn profile. Now that you don’t look like a stalker, join your alma mater’s LinkedIn community, which is probably a private community. Once you’re accepted, see if you can’t be somebody’s fairy godmother.

Oftentimes, students will use this group’s discussion to seek guidance or look for internship opportunities from alumni. If you’ve got a hookup or advice to offer, feel free to respond. Maybe you see a student getting her B.S. in Computer Science wondering if she ought to get her SCRUM certification. If you know the answer, now is the time to pipe up.

There! Don’t you feel more like a contributing member of society?

5. Endorse Friends To Say "Thanks"

Finally, how about a new spin on the thank-you note? As Neal Goldman put it, we live in a service economy, and sometimes the best compensation we can offer other people comes through relationship building. 

If somebody’s done something especially nice for you lately, why not send them an endorsement on LinkedIn? It’ll boost their credibility, make them look good and probably make them feel good. It’s fast and free, yet it could have a big impact on their career.

Aside from job hunting, what are the ways you use LinkedIn?

See also:

• Why Aren't College Students Using LinkedIn To Find Jobs?
• Dear College Students: LinkedIn Is Not The Same As Facebook
• LinkedIn Is Trying To Ban The World's Oldest Profession

We can only assume the monologue will be recorded and shared, but either way it's a hilarious and cunning twist on the general celebrity Reddit AMA. Celebrities everywhere should be taking note that the best way to engage the Internet is not only to challenge them, but to do so in a way that adds value only you can provide. In this case, it's Jackson's unique ability to rant. 

(Read more: Bill Gates Does An AMA On Reddit - Promotes Robots, Speech & More)

Get. Your. Ass. Up.

At publication time, the leading comment (with an astounding 25,000 upvotes) comes from Reddit user teaguechrystie. Titled "my new alarm clock," it's a stirring speech designed to help get your out of bed. Try reading this line in your head in Samuel Jackson's voice: "You think it's supposed to come easy? You think I've had it easy? Get your ass up. Get. Your ass. Up. Right now."

The rest of the rant is sort of like that, but the roughly 220 more words are studded with far too many f-bombs to reprint here. Hopefully, the actor will soon be stringing together this rant in an online video that could serve as inspiration for slug-a-beds everywhere.  

(Read more: I Am A President -- Obamamania Shuts Down Reddit)

Charitable Motives

Jackson's real Reddit motive is to raise awareness for the Alzheimer's Association. His Reddit post promotes chances to meet him in the UK for lunch with a $3 donation on his Prizeo page. A $200 donation gets an autographed Kangol hat, his trademark headwear of choice. 

The contest is slated to run through Thursday. We'll add video of the winning monologue as soon as it's available. 

Update on 5/31/13 at 12:54 p.m. PT: Jackson has released the first video to YouTube after announcing that he would in fact be picking two monologues, one based on upvotes and the other being one of his choosing. This first release appears to be Jackson's personal choice considering many Reddit users are pointing out that the submitted monologue was not in the running for the top upvote slot, still currently held by "my new alarm clock."  Here it is folks: 

A new study from Ipsos commissioned by Microsoft found that 46% of respondents believed that their work was more productive using social media tools. Breaking that down by gender, 49% of men believe they get more work done using social media, with 44% of women making the same argument.

Like any other survey sponsored by a big corporation, there's a hidden message. In this case, Microsoft wants to push increased use of social tools in the enterprise, particularly with its stable of Yammer products, and SharePoint.

Getting social media implemented in the enterprise (or any other workplace) hasn't been easy. Pointy-haired bosses were cited as a significant friction point on social media use in the survey: 34% of respondents blamed management for underestimating the benefits of social software in the workplace. When asked what the specific reasons why they believed social media was being restricted, men blamed security concerns and women put the finger on productivity loss.

The survey results about on the actual use of social media were interesting across the genders. Women were found to be more likely to use social media in four of the top five implementations of social media: communicating with colleagues, sharing/reviewing documents, communicating with clients and promoting a work-related initiative. Men were more likely to grow their own professional networks, the survey found.

The infographic from the survey has some other interesting pieces of data, which you can scope out below. (Watch out for that second pie chart, because either the "Other" slice is too big, or the reported 12% figure is too small.)

(Read more: With Pulse, LinkedIn Is Becoming The Newspaper Of The Future)

The company released this video that details how users can best use the new navigation addition: 

I'm sure the benefits of social business are dramatic and undeniable, but am I alone in being totally creeped out at what seems to be an obvious invasion of privacy? I don't know about you, but I'm just not ready for companies - even companies I choose to do business with - to closely follow everything I do and say. Even if other humans aren't involved.

Do You Want To Be Connected To A Machine?

At a recent executive event in San Francisco, Benioff entertained customers and journalists wtih a video featuring Beth Comstock, GE's high-profile CMO, claiming her "core belief" is that "business is social." But she didn't just mean people communicating with people, she also meant people communicating with machines. 

The big question for GE, Comstock said, is "how do we connect our customers/employees to our machines?" GE's goal is to combine data from customers and data from its machines - connecting machines to social networks is very big.

The video demonstrated how GE was connecting jet engines to social networks to alert mechanics of their diagnostic status. "If you're in business," Comstock said, "you need social because it will get you closer to your customer… Feedback - that's a marketers dream."

Sounds great, right?

The Menace Of An Internet-Enabled Toothbrush

But consider Benioff's example of the Internet of Things driving social business. He cited Philips' Internet-connected toothbrush that records the time and duration of brushing. With one of these babies, when you go to the dentist and he asks, "have you been brushing" and you answer "yeah," the conversation doesn't end there, Benioff said. The dentist could reply "Let's have a look" and see exactly how much brushing you actually did.

That thought terrifies me. While such a scenario might indeed help keep my teeth from falling out, it's also profoundly creepy and invasive. After all, what if my dental insurance provider got hold of the data, and decided it wouldn't pay to fill that cavity because I didn't brush long enough?

As Benioff correctly noted, the "biggest part is trust." "With all that data about you out on the network, it gets down to another level of trust with the vendors you choose to let be a part of your life."

I trust my doctor with a large amount of intensely personal information - augmented by pretty specific laws and industry practices. For some reason, I'm less comfortable giving my dentist the same degree of trust. Philips and Salesforce? Absolutely not!

How Much Should Your Shirt Salesman Know About You?

Another participant at the event, male-apparel retailer Trunk Club, is also leveraging user information to help "guys that just dont like to shop" said COO Rob Chesney. Trunk Club's goal is to make "it really easy for you to look great" by not just tracking what he's already bought, but whatever other information may be available online. When a customer contacts Trunk Club, "we pull up this guy and find out what is he all about. We see all his social media info. "It's the future of service-oriented retail."

Not for me.

Chesney noted that having this kind of info could help Trunk Club sell higher end clothing to a customer who just got a promotion - an event it might learn of Facebook. That might not be so bad, but what is the company going to do if the customer gets laid off? Offer condolences and try to sell them cheap t-shirts? Awkward to say the least.

Social.com: Salesforce's Facebook & Twitter Tools

Salesforce also pitched its new Social.com tools, designed to help other companies operate this way. Salesforce rolled out the ability to run Facebook campaigns that target users based on what they've posted and linked to on their own Facebook pages.

On Twitter, the idea is start "buying in the moment" - spreading promoted tweets even as the larger Twitter conversation is trending. The promoted tweet shows up any time someone tweets with a relevant hashtag.

To make that work, of course, you've got to be monitoring all the time. "You can't be relevant if you're not listening," explained Facebook's Fergus Gluster (yes, that's his real name).

Jonathan Nelson, CEO of ad agency Omnicom Digital, said that these innovations are a key step toward closing the loop linking real-time advertising to real-time buying. The key, he said, is delviering "the right message for the right person at the right time."

Ironically, in a small panel discussion for journalists, Nelson noted that the "suppression of advertising" when it's not appropriate is "more than half the battle."

That's a key part of reducing the creep factor. 

Finally, just so you know, I'm not alone in worrying about these issues. Another panelist, Altimeter Group's Susan Etlinger, admitted that "as a consumer, I don't particularly want to be targeted." The key, Etlinger said, is to build a relationship over time and "be relevant when the consumer needs us, not when we need them." 

That's a step in the right direction. But if companies they really care about not being creepy, they'll learn to respond quickly and effectively when asked, and otherwise stay out of my face.

Photos - except for the toothbrush - by Fredric Paul for ReadWrite

Hangouts: Google Messaging, Unmessy At Last

According to a statement from Nikhyl Singhal, Google's head honcho of real-time communications, Google Voice will be folded into Hangouts too (Yay!), though there's no word on when.

Google+ Gets A Lot Of Love

Messaging may have been the messiest area of Google's social services, but Google+ is the big umbrella that covers them all. Amidst the company's epic 3-hour-plus Google I/O keynote yesterday, Google+ guru Vic Gundotra announced approximately one million updates to Google+, the social network that the company launched two years ago. Okay, he pegged the number at 41… but that's almost a million.

The updates are extensive. As a regular Google+ user, it's actually difficult to get a sense for what changed, since the redesign looks and feels right in stride with Google's recent overall changes in user interfaces that runs from Google+ to Google Glass to Google Now and Android. So here's a list of some of the most notable of the 41 updates:

• A multi-column layout. This can be toggled off, if you're still into the Blogger single-column-era.
• Photos and videos get even bigger. Google is really into making media massive - and we would be too if the average person knew how to share properly high-res photos.
• New animations. Things are flipping and sliding all over the place in there.
• A third dimension. You can scroll up and down through your social stream, but Google wants you to be able to scroll in too. Now you can take a deeper dive on a given Google+ post -or is it a Card? I think we're suppose to call everything Cards now -- via related hashtags, which will lead you to more content of interest. It will also take you further down the Google+ rabbit hole, of course.
• Lots of treats for photographers. Google+ has a thriving community of awesome photogs, and Google is keen to do right by them. Photos in Google+ now have all sorts of cool bells and whistles. A few I'm particularly stoked about include "auto highlight," which de-emphasizes duplicate and blurry pics, automatically picking the best shot out of a batch. I've yet to test this extensively, but since I have a habit of bracketing (taking multiple shots at different exposures) - even on my phone - choosing the best photo of a set can be a major timesuck. This feature could help there. Another feature, "Auto Awesome," can stitch together shots in a series to make a playful Photobooth-esque picture or even a Vine-like animated gif.

For a full breakdown of Google's social updates, hit the company's official blog post or just cruise around in Google+ for a while. The  the social network has been the butt of many a joke over the last few years, and we're happy to see Google take the time to spruce things up a little.

 

Photos by Nick Statt for ReadWrite. 

Pinterest is a three-year-old start-up with what is rumored to be no revenue to date. Zero. In fact, by all accounts, it hasn’t even attempted to generate revenue yet. In three years! Hard to fathom in this day and age, isn’t it?

And, yet, some of the sharpest minds in the venture capital community are so confident in Pinterest’s team and business that they recently invested in the company at an eye-popping valuation of $2.5 billion. Yes, billion!

If you were involved in the Internet economy of the late-1990s, as was I, you may be rolling your eyes right about now and muttering to yourself about Pets.com, Kozmo, Webvan, theGlobe.com, govWorks, Boo.com, eToys and all the other so-called-companies that were, for one brief moment in time, valued as if they had discovered the cure to cancer, only to be out of business a few short quarters later. Ahh... the memories.

Assuming that Pinterest’s investors share many of the same recent memories (or, more aptly, nightmares), what could be so compelling about the company and opportunity that would justify their support of such a lofty valuation this time around?

Passion At Scale

In short, I believe it is the economics of passion at scale.

Pinterest, in its own words, is “a tool for collecting and organizing things you love).” (Italics mine.) By pinning images from around the Web to their own board(s) or browsing others’ pinboards for images (which can then be “liked” or “re-pinned” to their own board(s)), users are able to create, manage, share and discover highly personalized image collections that define their passions.

Vintage fashion. Wind surfing. Gourmet cooking. Disneyana. Digital photography. Wedding gowns. Home decor. Camping. Italian design. Rolex watches. Travel planning. Architecture. Mid-century furniture. Urban farming. Knitting. Cross-Fit... The list of people’s passions is literally endless; and, Pinterest helps its users collect, organize and maintain all of them. On their own (or, with the help of the broader community). In granular, image- and/or SKU-specific detail.

Self-identified passionistas on a product-by-product basis — are you kidding? I’m not sure a marketer or merchant could dream of more fertile ground among a set of unknown people, short of seeing a prospective customer standing directly in front of items on a shelf, with cash already in hand. And, I’m not even convinced that would be more compelling on a long-term basis.

What could possibly be better? How about having that level of insight into the interests and intents and aspirations of not hundreds of thousands, but tens of millions, of people per month! According to press reports, Pinterest is already doing just that, hosting roughly 30 million unique monthly visitors who are generating more than 2.5 billion page views, the majority of which are likely coming through little more than domestic word-of-mouth promotion.

Fast forward three years and I think it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Pinterest is successful at growing its user base and traffic flows by 5 times, fueled by existing users continuing to build out their identities, waves of more mainstream domestic users finally catching on and contributions from millions of new pinners (their word, not mine) in overseas markets. That’s a lot of passion under one roof!

Passion Pays

On the business side of the house, passion pays. Extremely well.

Advertising, alone, could generate several hundred million dollars of revenue per year. Let’s say, hypothetically, that Pinterest follows in the footsteps of virtually every sizable media company on the planet, by introducing advertisements of some sort across its pages in the next few years. With marketers across every vertical likely salivating at the prospect of reaching into the company’s massive, impassioned and finely segmentable audience, it seems more than plausible that advertising rates across the company’s site could be at least 50% higher (if not considerably more) than the current industry average. Accordingly, with 12.5 billion page views per month (three years from now) and a site-wide CPM of, say, $4, Pinterest would generate advertising revenue of roughly $50 million per month, or about $600 million per year.

And yet, despite this sum, Pinterests more intriguing revenue opportunity at Pinterest lay in its role as a direct facilitator of online commerce.

Passions, as we all know, cost money — lots of it, over extended periods of time; and, it is money that we are, on some level, actually excited to spend. So, whether it’s a weekend warrior who pins a Burton snowboard, or a hobbyist portrait photographer pinning a Zeiss lens, or a budding interior decorator who pins the perfect accent table on Fab, Pinterest has the potential to become an economic kingmaker when these enthusiasts transition into consumers looking to purchase the goods/services that bring their passions to life.

Projecting Pinterest's Numbers

To appreciate the financial implications of Pinterest’s role in the transaction cycle, think of the service as a massive affiliate that gets paid for delivering customers to online merchants. If just ~3% of its 150 million+ users (three years from now) decide to indulge in their passions by clicking from a "want-to-have" product image on one of their own Pinterest boards to a relevant online merchant, the company could claim a direct role in driving 4.5 million transactions per month. Assuming an average transaction size of $200 (remember, people are buying their passions, not everyday staples), Pinterest’s users would account for ~$900 million worth of monthly purchases. Were the company to receive a 7% affiliate “take”/lead fee/commission on these sales, it would generate transactional revenue of about $60 million per month, or $720 million per year.

As if annual revenue of $1.3 billion (from just two sources) weren’t enough, the company’s margin profile has the potential to be the envy of most. Based on my 15+ years of experience evaluating a wide variety of online marketplace business models, it wouldn’t surprise me if Pinterest were able to sustain gross margins of 90% or more and adjusted EBITDA margins comfortably in excess of 25% (even while continuing to invest heavily in future growth). At these levels, the company would generate adjusted EBITDA of approximately $325 million per year.

Worth It? Or Not?

So... were Pinterest’s investors ultimately wise to value the company at $2.5 billion? No comment.

Will the company generate any annual revenue, let alone $1.3 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of $325 million in a few short years? I don't know.

Will Pinterest eventually be worth $5 million or $50 billion? I can’t wait to find out.

Those purposeful vagaries aside, though, I clearly see the underpinnings of a company with tremendous potential and, if I squint just enough, a business that could be the driver of billions of dollars of passion-fueled online commerce each year — and that’s a position that few companies ever even have the chance to dream about.

Prior to Fullscreen's app, Glass users were restricted to sharing video through their Google+ accounts. Check out Fullscreen's video below:

And here is the company's step-by-step breakdown of how to broaden Glass' video-sharing reach:

The feature was first announced as 'Trusted Friends' in October of 2011. "However, we were only testing for the first part of last year [2012], and the feature actually wasn't available for much of 2012," Frederic Wolens of Facebook Policy Communications told ReadWrite in an email. "The bulk of our work was making this more proactive (allowing you to select your friends ahead of time) than reactive (selecting your friends after you couldn't get into your account)," he added. 

The Joy Of Facebook Hacking

While there may be some benefits to this feature, Facebook already has two-step authentication, making Trusted Contacts unnecessary in the likely event you can access your email and just use the normal password recovery option. More to the point, Trusted Contacts also pose a big risk. How much can you really trust those Trusted Contacts not to abuse their power?

Remember, it takes only three of the Trusted Contacts' codes to get into your account. That's good, right?

Right.

Unless the friends you choose have an affinity for the art of the Facebook hack. In my college years, when shared computers were often accessible in dorm rooms and campus hangout spots, Facebook hacking wasn't just a prank, it was an art. The rules were simple: If anyone left their account open on any computer that wasn't their own that person's Facebook account was fair game. (Sometimes, even that simple rule was bent by the less honorable.)

What typically ensued was a chaotic, hilarious and often line-crossing exercise in testing the limits of friendship. The hack quickly transcended crude status updates and moved into true social media sabotage. Facebook hackers would change birthdays, send unwanted friend requests and write embarrassing notes on walls.  

For me, the whole ordeal culminated in a prank where I created a fake profile of my victim, replicated his post history for a week in secret, and then began friending everyone we knew. I mimicked his behavior so well no one figured out it was me for a good day or two. It remains one of my proudest Facebook hacks - and the epitome of my juvenile social media behavior. 

Breaking In

First off, let's run through how a trio of your Trusted Contacts could access your account without you knowing about it. 

After opening Facebook in a different browser or private browsing mode, a Trusted Friend would  click "Forgot your password?" From there, they would identify the victim by name in the Find Your Account field, saying that they no longer have access to the email accounts listed. That lets you put in any email address - and the process moves on without requiring further authentication.

By entering in only one of the Trusted Contacts' names — in the event that you're the one doing the hacking, it can be your own name — you can access the code portion of the page. With three codes collected by visiting Facebook.com/recover and claiming the person has reached you by phone, you're immediately brought to a new password screen where the Trusted Friend can reset the password and gain access to the account. 

Sounds like it would be a lot of work, and it certainly is when I tried it myself on my own account, but you are essentially handing over the ability for three people, or just one who convinces two others to give them the codes, to change your password without any new authentication required on your end. Granted, you can revoke access to a Trusted Contact, but only from your account.  

Who Can You Trust?

Obviously, the best precaution is to pick people you're confident won't prank you. But there are also a certain types of Facebook user who should never get this kind of access. 

For one, don't trust anyone who infrequently uses Facebook or who likes to condemn the social network and those who indulge too much in it. The first sign of a weakness for Facebook hacking is disregard for the damage a "Liking" spree can do, or downplaying the importance of Facebook birthdays. These people find it hilarious when dozens of people begin mistakenly wishing you a Happy Birthday. 

Conversely, people who use Facebook too much may be just itching to pull off the perfect Facebook prank - and they'll know the the best, most believable ways to impersonate you.

One smart approach might be to pick two people that dislike each other, making it unlikely that they'll work together to mess with you. 

The simplest solution: Don't use Trusted Contacts. The feature adds a layer of defense against strangers attacking your account, which could be reasonable considering this year's surge incidents of malicious hacking. But it also seems like a sly attempt to push the boundaries of Facebook's importance in our lives. 

But by "trusting" your friends enough to give them a key to your digital life, you may be taking an even bigger risk of being pranked, if not actually hacked.

Instagram 3.5 adds the ability to tag other Instagrammers in the photos you take. Unlike Facebook, where photo tagging has been routine for years, Instagram devotees have relied on a bare-bones system of @tags in the comments section below photos to give other users the heads-up that a given image is relevant to them.

I asked an Instagram rep if the new tagging feature is a play for making more money off mobile use — a revenue stream Facebook has square in its crosshairs. The company denies it: "At this time Instagram isn’t focused on monetization. [Instagram] rolled out this new feature because it was a missing piece to let people tell their stories... and to make it easier to add people and things to photos."

According to Instagram's business blog:

Photos of You also gives people a new way to explore photos of your business or brand. People can now add their favorite band to their concert photos from last night, the clothing brand they’re currently wearing or the coffee roaster who brews their morning cup of coffee. As a business or brand, Photos of You gives you a new way to curate and share the photos that best showcase your brand your brand[sic] as documented by your biggest fans.

Instagram's Biggest Update In, Well, As Long As We Can Remember 

Instagram hasn't made many major overhauls to its winning formula since launching in October 2010. Over the course of the last year, the app has trickled in a few new photo filters, a map view and a web interface, but not too much has changed — even after the great Instagram ToS debacle of last December.

Considering the level of loyalty that the company enjoys — particularly when compared to peers like its oft-disdained parent company — not tinkering with its recipe is smart. But, happily, so is this update.

Since version 3.5 was a simultaneous launch across platforms, Android and iPhone users eager to get their tag on can download the new app now. Update 3.5 also boasts improvements to image quality for photos uploaded on Android 4.0 and above (a relief for any Instagrammers who wonder why those Android photos never look quite right). 

Once you've got it downloaded, a pop-up will point to the new section, which lives on the far-right profile button (click the little image that looks like a driver's license).

In the profile view, you'll be greeted with a very Facebook-like silhouette of a person, again on the far right. This "photos of you" section compiles exactly that, though it will remain private until May 16 to give you time to pick your best selfie angles and curate accordingly. 

Why Brands Should Be Taking Notes

While other recent feature tweaks haven't shaken things up too much for Instagram, version 3.5 has all the trappings of a game-changer. Users will be pleased to have photos taken of them heaped into one neat little memory pile, while brands should be thrilled with their higher visibility on the young advertising platform. With photo tagging enabled, Instagram's platform should provide some unique perspectives on brand reach and the demographics of who is engaging and why. 

Plenty of brands have launched heavy-handed hashtag campaigns in an effort to figure out what makes Instagram users — ahem, potential customers — tick. Now, with the tagging feature, Instagram users will have a natural incentive to tag not just the "who", but the "what" and "where," too. Which should, in turn, spur more businesses to rev up their Instagramming.

But just remember, brands: Keep it real. An awkward hashtag is a fate worse than a grainy, Hefe-filtered selfie.

Amidst the Boston Marathon tragedy, Facebook on Monday was a fascinating environment to observe. There was so much to NOT "like" that day—gruesome pictures shortly followed by inspirational images and quotes. Either way, merely hitting a button seemed inadequate to me. 

Good thing I'd already decided I wasn't going to "like" anything this month.

I ended up just donating money to the Red Cross Blood Collection service and then staying fairly silent.

The tragedy merely confirmed my decision to change a behavior that I, like many, have adopted into my daily activities. I'm not going to “like” anything on the internet. Anywhere. Not on Facebook, and not on websites featuring a similar “like” button.

Let me back up.

Not so long ago, there was a much wider gap between the various methods for acknowledging online content. At one end, you had the option of reading something and then doing absolutely nothing. On the other, you had things like leaving a comment, emailing the post to a friend, or writing a blog post in response to another you read elsewhere.

But in early 2009, an extremely low-impact feature came to exist: the "like." It was a brilliant addition, and it quickly has become a staple of daily Internet activity across the world, websites, and devices. It wasn't the first or last of its kind, but the "like" did ultimately become something that now gets billions of clicks. Facebook alone generates somewhere around 3 billion "likes" a day.

This weekend I stopped to evaluate my own usage of this button and came to the following unscientific but plausible conclusions:

• Only 5% of the time when I “like” something on the Web am I doing so to share it explicitly with my network. I do believe, though, that clicking “like” within Facebook helps drive what content becomes popular for my friends and myself. Sometimes it’s a big life moment like a wedding, other times it’s an Amazon review for a Banana Slicer.
• Hitting the “like” button on Facebook itself has stopped me from writing comments (and articulating actual thoughts) in response to items others are posting. I feel like I've already done enough by clicking a button.
• I’ve hit the "like" button thousands of times out of obligation, for worry that I might hurt someone's feelings or make them feel ignored.

So reviewing all the points above, I wondered about the following question: Who exactly is benefitting the most from me hitting this button? That’s the question I'm trying to solve for with this experiment.

In the meantime, here are a few observations from my first 72 hours of not hitting the “like” button—an action that I have taken everyday for probably the last two years.

1) I already slipped up once and had to go "unlike" something I "liked." It bothered me how mechanical the act of reading Facebook posts and "liking" had become.

2) I started leaving 10x more comments on posts, and have spent more time articulating my responses to longer discussion threads.

3) While my time spent on Facebook has continued to decrease, taking away the act of “liking” has further reduced my time on the social network and increased it on Twitter, Reddit, and get this…email.

4) I’ve continued to check Facebook immediately when a notification flag has popped up to see who has liked my posts. I suspect this won’t change throughout the experiment.

I may be overanalyzing here, but my hope is that it will spur others to reflect on their own low-impact, low-investment habits online. I’ll be providing a report in the next week or so with further observations. For now, I encourage you to either join me in this experiment, leave a comment below, or ... do absolutely nothing.

Just don't click that button.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

As is now par for the course, news of the disaster broke first on Twitter, and the microblogging service remains an unparalleled source of breaking news and first-hand accounts — not to mention media criticism of news outlets that jumped ahead of the facts in their reporting.

The presumed attack has since been documented in thousands upon thousands of user generated images and videos  spread across the Web through social media channels. (Among other things, this Vine video appears to show one of the first explosions.) Spencer Ackerman over at Wired.com called it a "live-tweeted disaster."

Boston-area and federal authorities have also embraced Twitter to get out public-safety messages — for instance, asking people to stay away from the affected area and not to congregate in large groups. Police have also requested video from spectators: 

BostonPolice looking for video of the finish line #tweetfromthebeat via @cherylfiandaca

— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 15, 2013

(Atlantic Wire's Alexis Madrigal looks into how investigators might analyze contributed video.)

The Boston Globe received a video of the finish line during the initial explosion, embedded below. This video doesn't contain any graphic images of injured individuals, but it does feature the explosions, the onset of immediate panic in the crowd and police and marathon volunteers rushing to assist victims.

Google has also just launched a person-finder web tool to help those trying to reach friends and family members.

Of course, any disaster aftermath has to feature its share of incomplete, misleading or just plain wrong reports. (It may take days to figure out which category some news reports fall into.) For instance, at 4:55pm, the Associated Press reported that officials had shut down cell service in Boston to prevent any further explosions:

Cellphone service shut down in Boston to prevent remote detonations of explosives, official says: apne.ws/ZwBMKb -CC

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 15, 2013

Only, that is, to walk back the story about 45 minutes later:

Phone companies say cell service still operating in Boston after explosions: apne.ws/ZwFgMx -CC

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 15, 2013

Similarly, early reports that a third bombing took place at the JFK Memorial Library are apparently false. The library's official Twitter feed reports that the incident was a fire that started in the mechanical room, and that all staff and visitors are accounted for and safe.

Investigators are investigating. Any tie to Boston Marathon explosions is pure speculation. More information as we receive it.

— JFK Library (@JFKLibrary) April 15, 2013

With the ongoing budget crisis, pressure for the IRS to recover lost revenue has never been higher. Conveniently enough, the agency has made massive investments in its computing power and tools for crunching big data, allowing for more automation and rapid analysis. That means a greater capacity for robo-audits and less room for honest mistakes.

It's not just the tools that have improved. The data itself is richer and more varied than ever, drawing increasingly from whatever details about our digital lives the IRS can get its hands on, including information that isn't publicly accessible. We don't know the full extent of the IRS's data-mining capabilities, but recent reporting has revealed new details. 

1. Analyzing Your Social Media Updates 

The social Web has been a boon for IRS investigators, who can use updates from Facebook, Twitter and other services to bolster its cases against alleged tax cheats. Information about work history, one's physical whereabouts and even purchases can be gleaned from social networks. Some of it, like tweets and certain details from Facebook, are public. But should the IRS want to take a closer look, it supposedly has the means to do so, with or without a warrant. 

According to recent reports, the IRS cross-references data from social networks with Social Security numbers and then works in a host of other private data to look for suspicious patterns. 

2. Monitoring Digital Payments and Credit Card Activity 

The rise of commerce and digital payments have also given the IRS new sets of data to mine and analyze. The agency has long looked at taxpayers' activity on ecommerce sites like Ebay, but are now going deeper and getting a look at credit card transactions and other online payments. 

The agency looks for potential auditing targets "by matching tax filings to social media or electronic payments," according to MSN Money. The exact mechanism of this monitoring isn't known, but MSN Money indicates that it includes examining credit card transactions "for the first time ever." 

It's not clear how detailed or widespread this monitoring is, and the IRS isn't likely to spill the beans (lest they tip off tax cheats), but suffice it to say that if the agency feels it has cause to take a peek at your online payment data, it won't have a problem doing so. 

3. Peeking At Your Email Usage 

Exactly when and how the IRS looks at email usage isn't entirely clear. The MSN Money report says the agency's big data analysis tools are used in part for "tracking individual Internet addresses and emailing patterns." That's pretty vague. In theory, the IRS could glean some details about email usage simply by looking at browsing activity, whether that insight comes from an ISP or email service provider. 

Does that mean that the IRS has blanket access to everybody's Gmail account for the purpose of feeding its data-crunching behemoth? That seems pretty unlikely. Instead, what it likely does is request access to individual accounts for people who are already suspected of wrongdoing. The American Civil Liberties Union recently uncovered documents that suggest the IRS doesn't feel a warrant is necessary to get such access. Good to know!

No investors plunked down cash for new Foursquare shares. Instead, new investor Silver Lake Waterman led the financing with what other reports are calling a multiyear loan, while existing Foursquare investors — Andreessen Horowitz, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures — offered loans that will convert to equity if Foursquare's valuation rises.

In other words, Foursquare just put itself into the hole in a high-risk gamble. The Silver Lake loan will most likely force the startup to make regular interest and principal payments lest it risk default — creating a steady cash drain that most startups try hard to avoid. We've reached out to Foursquare for more information on that investment, and I'll update when and if I hear back.

The convertible debt, meanwhile, represents a hedge of sorts for the company's existing investors. They get to sidestep the question of Foursquare's actual valuation — which obviously suggests it's not doing that great — and, should things go south, may stand a better chance of recouping some of their investment than if they held nothing but equity.

A Foursquare In Flatland

This means Foursquare, which has increasingly found itself in trouble with the entry of Google+ and Facebook into local search, is under a lot more pressure to demonstrate that it can make money. Investors like Union Square's Albert Wenger claim they see opportunities for Foursquare to take off, with the explosion of smartphones and abatement of couponing services like Groupon.

Wenger highlights what Foursquare really wants you to do with its app: Don't just check in, but identify retailers and businesses more actively so that your data in turn can drive better local searches. It's a tough nut to crack, particularly since Android users are more easily tied to Google to do the same thing, and many smartphone users of any platform are apt to use Facebook.

This may be the key problem for Foursquare: it's too specialized. Users may be more likely to share information on Facebook, for example, because they're already using it to socialize. I don't use either service regularly, but if I did, I'd rather share a review with my more well-developed network of Facebook friends.

Foursquare is going to have to turn itself around and get more money coming in the door. If it can't do get positive cash flow through its services, it may have to resort to other methods, such as raise equity privately or publicly to pay off debt holders.

There's also the option my former colleague Jon Mitchell has put forth: Fourquare could sell itself to Apple. Or any bigger company, for that matter. Given Apple's need for better local data, Mitchell's argument makes a whole heck of a lot of sense.

However it does it, Foursquare now has to make money fast to work off this new debt in a very competitive market. If it doesn't get traction soon, Foursquare won't be mayor of anything.

Image courtesy of Juan Camilo Bernal/Shutterstock.

Now that Ebert has died, should I unfollow him? Should you? Is there a protocol for this?

Roger Ebert wrote over 30,000 tweets and had over 800,000 followers. I was one of them. I'm not sure what to do now. I'm also not sure if Twitter knows what to do in this situation.

True, one of its press representatives did respond to my queries with a link that explains how relatives or estate representatives can request deactivation — i.e., deletion — of an account following its owner's death. Twitter will not, however, grant anyone access to the account of someone who's passed away.

Still, what becomes of Ebert's tweets now that he's dead? What of the fact that at least one person, Jim Emerson, editor of Ebert's blog site, has access to the account — and has tweeted on it twice since Ebert's death? (Albeit apparently at Ebert's request.) Should Ebert's wife, or Emerson, or anyone else keep tweeting on Ebert's "verified" account? Wouldn't that be weird? 

A Powerful Voice On Twitter

Ebert's tweets touched on movies, obviously, but also politics, the environment, music, gun control, climate change and much more. He came to Twitter reluctantly before happily embracing the new medium. In a 2010 column for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert wrote:

I vowed I would never become a Twit. Now I have Tweeted nearly 10,000 Tweets. I said Twitter represented the end of civilization. It now represents a part of the civilization I live in. I said it was impossible to think of great writing in terms of 140 characters. I have been humbled by a mother of three in New Delhi. I said I feared I would become addicted. I was correct.

He quickly became one of the more popular, respected voices on Twitter. In the same essay, Ebert also provided his thoughts on how to tweet effectively:

My rules for Twittering are few: I tweet in basic English. I avoid abbreviations and ChatSpell. I go for complete sentences. I try to make my links worth a click. I am not above snark, no matter what I may have written in the past. I tweet my interests, including science and politics, as well as the movies. I try to keep links to stuff on my own site down to around 5 or 10%. I try to think twice before posting.

He also shared his views on what Twitter meant to him:

When you think about it, Twitter is something like a casual conversation among friends over dinner: Jokes, gossip, idle chatter, despair, philosophy, snark, outrage, news bulletins, mourning the dead, passing the time, remembering favorite lines, revealing yourself.

Ebert revealed himself in life, on Twitter. Will those tweets soon go away? Given Ebert's popularity on Twitter and his general celebrity, will Twitter see fit to honor him somehow?

I have long been a fan of Ebert's work. I loved Siskel & Ebert, even when he and Gene Siskel were reviewing awful movies. I know Ebert wrote the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which I've watched. I know he wrote many books, launched a popular movie festival and had a highly trafficked blogsite. I know he worked with Microsoft on Cinemania, an interactive movie guide on CD-ROMs.

Nonetheless, I believe I know him best, know him most fully — as a person — from Twitter. Now that he's dead, it seems not merely unseemly to unfollow him. More... unnecessarily sad.

Bury Me With My Tweet On

In 2009, Facebook announced a "memorialize" feature, in large part so that users would not be auto-reminded to "reconnect" with a person on Facebook that had since died.

We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized.

(See also: Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook?)

To verify the person's death, Facebook requires friends or family to complete a form that contains a link to the person's obituary or other information confirming the death. Twitter doesn't offer anything similar, although as noted above, the service does allow relatives or estate representatives to request that accounts of the deceased be deleted. 

Perhaps it shouldn't. Perhaps the account should remain available, though in a state of suspended digital animation. If Twitter is a conversation, as Ebert himself suggested, even the person's death can't make past conversations disappear.

Though this still does not answer the question, which may be unanswerable, of whether or not I should unfollow someone that is now dead. Particularly when that someone mattered to me, even if solely via digital channels.

Ebert never hid the fact that late in life, salivary cancer stripped him of his vocal chords, his jaw and his voice, and that he had to rely on a computer to speak and write. Here is his TED talk, "Remaking My Voice," from April 2011.

Roger Ebert never replied to any of my tweets to him, nor ever favorited a tweet of mine. Now he never will. There could come a time when I decide to cull through my Twitter followers and delete Ebert's account. I am glad, however, that Twitter was there to bring Ebert closer to me.

I hope Twitter honors him in some appropriate manner. I also hope that Ebert's many 140-character tweets continue to live  forever. 

Image of Roger Ebert and wife courtesy of Shutterstock

(See also Facebook's Zuckerberg: We're Not Going To Build A Phone.) 

On Thursday, just two months later, Facebook is widely expected to announce an Android device in partnership with HTC at an event at its Menlo Park headquarters. The phone - yes, the Facebook phone - is expected to run a modified but not fully skinned version of Android, retooled to revolve around the little blue "f" that has come so far. At least that what the leaks seem to reveal.  If we're getting into semantics, you could say Facebook isn't building the Facebook phone - HTC is. 

So, How Did We Get Here?

Want to review the many times Zuck has denied rumors of an official Facebook phone? Here's a refresher:

November 3, 2010:

• "First of all, we're not a hardware company. Second of all, our goal is not to sell anything physical; our goal is to make it so that everything can be social."
• "It would be pretty silly for us to go after a strategy that focused on selling a small number of phones. We don't sell hardware. That's just not what we do." 

September 11th, 2012:

• “That’s always been the wrong strategy for us,” he explained. “It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us.”

January 30, 2013:

• "People keep on asking if we're going to build a phone," said Zuckerberg. "We're not going to build a phone."

In retrospect, it seems the denials around "building" a phone seems to have left the door open for hardware partners. It's not like we thought Hacker Way was going to turn into Foxconn or anything, but assuming Thursday's event turns out as expected, that Zuck sure is one literal fellow.

But What About The Other Four Facebook Phones?

The real funny thing? If Facebook launches a phone, it won't be the first Facebook phone at all - it'll be the fifth. 

Facebook Phones 1 and 2: Back in Februrary 2011 at Mobile World Congress, HTC unveiled a pair of phones with a curious twist: a physical button dedicated to launching the Android Facebook app. The HTC Status (a.k.a. the ChaCha) and the HTC Salsa were mid-range devices with largely unimpressive specs.

Facebook Phones 3 and 4: That April, a company called INQ announced the INQ Cloud Touch and the INQ Cloud Q - two semi-smartphones that would run a version of Android 2.2 interwoven with Facebook's Social Graph API. The Cloud Touch made it to shelves in the UK; INQ abandoned plans to manufacture the Cloud Q early in 2012.

Of all of the "Facebook phones" to date, the HTC Status enjoyed the most success, but that's not saying much. I reviewed it at the time - It was well built, with a funny little curve to the casing, social widgets everywhere and a tiny blue Facebook button on the bottom right. There was something likable about the Status - it was a playful little device, thoughtfully designed - but who was it for?

The Status went on sale - and then went on sale again - and ultimately just sort of faded away. Now you can get one for a penny on Amazon.

A New Mobile Era For Facebook?

But times have changed and the stakes have gotten a lot higher. After some major mobile fumbles (its slowness to the iPad, building in HTML5, etc.), Facebook now calls itself a mobile company, and really wants to mean it. 

In September of 2011, Facebook's Android app had 66 million monthly active users. By November 2012, that number had tripled. Facebook consumers one quarter of the total time people spend on mobile apps. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 23% of Facebook's total ad revenue was pumped into its coffers via mobile - up from 0%.

Facebook obviously gets the importance of mobile now. But it's still not clear why a new Facebook phone is a good idea. The company is as cozy as can be on Android and iOS already, and Facebook would be lucky to sell even "a small number" of these new phones, just as Zuck warned back in 2010. Even if the new Facebook software presented unique monetization opportunities, the revenue would barely be a drop in Facebook's ever-growing bucket.

So why bother? I guess we'll find out on Thursday. 

All photos by Taylor Hatmaker.

Oh, right.

(Click the image for a larger version.)

Cartoon produced by John Atkinson / Wrong Hands

Lede image via Shutterstock